My Name Is Dawanyeno, and: When My Husband Prayed

Abstract

My Name Is Dawanyeno, and: When My Husband Prayed Patricia Jabbeh Wesley (bio) I am the stranger woman, bearing hot coalsin my palms, the woman, born, Nyemade, Himeaanyene,but the old women in the birthing chambernamed Dawanyeno, Stranger-Woman, a woman, not of this world, an aliencoming into a new town where the Grebo languagebends differentlywhere they do not roll their tonguethe same way to say, “Nyemade.”My mother’s people renamed the womanfrom Gbolobo, Dawanyeno,that stranger. The other. That alien. Even in the villages of Liberia, people knowhow to discriminate the stranger-womanfrom the townswoman. As if being born in Dolokehinstead of Tugbakeh, my father’s town, wasn’t alienating enough.I was born with a burning flamein my heart and in my hands and on my tongue.I do not know ice, or cold, and cannot knowwhat chill feels like on skinand tongue, nor the way you put fire out. I am fire, fire-maker, the bearer of flames.I fill up spaces with the burning sores of my people,the forsaken, the black charcoal skin of my people,the African, we who have seen [End Page 62] our lands and our sons snatchedfrom us since the beginning of time.We who have seen our own sons appointed to chop off our heads and our handsand our umbilical cords, and our limbsand our homelands.I come with flames shooting from my nostrils.I burn, and I scorch things. I was not supposed to be woman, not supposedto sit and wait, or bend, so men can walk uponmy bare back, not supposed to be the canalwhere children flow from my body like a stream,as if this was all I was made to do.I was not supposed to be what they thought I was supposed to be. As a child,my father tried turning me into a son,into a lion, into fire, into a body of water, flowingwith fire, into the ocean justbeyond the hills from our home,to fill the many spaces his sisters never filled,into a goddess, a fiery flame in her hand,to burn and burn and burn. He tried to create a man out of the rubbleof my being, out of my womanness.But then, here I am—fire, fire, and I becameme, Dawanyeno, daughter of the lion, daughter of burningflames, stirrer of all things, daughter of womanwet from toil. Daughter of two towns whoseGrebo sound the same,but not really the same. Dawanyeno, without a town,born in alien country, aging in alien country.I was supposed to be a man, they said.But I declined the offer. [End Page 63] When My Husband Prayed Our children dreaded dinner because their father was a preacher man,who brought his sermons hometo the dinner table.At each meal, he prayed for everything,from the specks on the tableto the time of day, the gathering clouds,the tornados of which we hadn’t yet heard. The impending doom on the world and the civil war, eating upthe land and the people at home,the killing fields and our starving people,who would lose or who would win the warsto be fought tomorrow,wars, that peoplewho weren’t yet born, would start. Around the table, our fast-growing children, sat, anxious to eat, and the food, steaming.Sometimes, palm butter, cassava leaf,gravy, sometimes, just dried rice, deep-fried fish,pepper sauce, palm oil to eat with the rice.The children, learning fast, that rebellion didn’t do too wellin African households, even in America. That talking back or talking at your father or your mother isn’t right. That God could kill a child just for talking back.So, they sat still, their legs getting longer,those growing limbs that told you, [End Page 64] your children would be tall.The two younger ones, still not able to get their feet down to the floor, swinging tiny legs, my husband, going, Hallelujah, and praise the Lord,just a simple grace...